Aussie Childcare Network Forum

Just want to rant and share my experience and curious if anyone else has had an experience like this...

So I have a casual job as an assisting educator which I have been doing for a month. I also haven't completed my diploma or cert iii yet and feel I get judgement based on that alone. I work for a company who has centres all over the city, so the last two days I was working at a new centre. I have had mostly very positive experiences with my company save for the occasional rudeness which I just brush off. My base centre literally has the loveliest team I've ever met. Every one of them is an absolute darl. Anyway, this new centre I noticed towards the end of the day some people I worked with very judgemental and exaggerating my mistakes. I just brushed it off but wasn't looking forward to working there the next day. Again, I was placed with the same people in the morning and another lady who I had no problem with before but seemed she just tried to do literally everything herself and didn't ask for help. I was trying to help but I could only do so much because I didn't know their routine or where anything was. In the process of packing up an area, the lady literally was giving me no instructions. Bu tried to follow along, then a toddler fell on his face and was crying. Naturally, I picked him up and tried to calm him. But also he already had a large pre-existing scrape on his nose so was inspecting him and making sure he's alright. Suddenly, a lady in the next room came and literally screamed at me 'put that child down right now and help the girls clean!'

I was just shocked. And felt like she made me look like an idiot, lazy and selfish. When I am 99.999% sure I was doing nothing wrong by comforting the child. And I was already wishing I wasn't there and had a lot of pressures lately outside of work. I just started tearing up. I tried to hide it but it was getting worse. I was asked to do some things in the kitchen and it was there I had a massive panic attack and couldn't breathe properly or get my breath back to normal. The manager was lovely and tried to calm me and was very supportive and made me work in a different room. But literally an hour later I couldn't stop crying, so I went on my lunch break and I was mostly fine. I have never had such an emotional reaction at work or because of work so it was surprising for me too and I felt like people thought I must be so strange. I try to maintain a professional and competent image so it was embarrassing but felt I had no control. I am concerned how it will get around the company. And maybe they will not prefer me for shifts because they might think I'm full blown crazy. I've had no problems with most of the centres, I really just couldn't stand the way I was spoke to here. Has anyone else had a similar situation to this and how did it work out?

You poor thing! That’s terrible!
I think first and foremost everybody deserves the right to feel valued and a respected member of the team regardless of whether they are full time or filling in casually. Unfortunately as with any work place there are going to be people who treat others poorly and my guess is 9 times out of 10 they either have something going on themselves outside of work or perhaps don’t even want to be there. I have worked in childcare for 18years and have come across many different kinds of people over my years, many of which made me feel like your feeling and yes I have cried too! But don’t worry it happens to a lot of people! Although you may be embarrassed now, push it out of your mind and don’t worry about it, I would say your panic attack was caused by a build up of emotions and from holding everything you are going through outside of work in. This would of just been the icing on the cake to tip you over the edge. I wouldn’t worry about what other people think, We are only human and everyone has emotions! Besides those who matter won’t mind and those who mind don’t matter!! I think what you need is some confidence with your communication and your self worth. What helped me was to believe in myself and my abilities, and have the confidence to speak up when treated unfairly. I know this is not always easy to do but communication is so important! For example when that lady told you to put the child down, I would of said, no worries I will be happy to help with the cleaning but at the moment we have had a little accident and my duty of care is to the child ensuring there is no serious injuries. She would probably be taken a back by your response but you were doing the right thing and she can’t dispute that. But I guarantee she would probably be less likely to speak to you like that again because you have asserted yourself and also let her know that you do have knowledge of the responsibilities of working in the childcare environment. If you don’t feel confident in communicating with the the person speaking rudely to you, speak with the manager about your concerns, no professional management team would want their staff behaving in that manner. Inquire about their grievance procedure so you know what steps to take. Other advice is to use your initiative and just proceed to do things if you are faced with a situation where the educator is trying to do everything. If you see something that needs to be done just do it. if the other educator is going to try and do everything herself after you have asked if there is anything she would like done than that’s on her. Let her do it and you can just enjoy the kids there is nothing you can do about it, other then to use your initiative and if you see something you can do to help just do it, don’t ask. At the end of the day you are there for the kids and to learn what to do and sometimes not what to do from other staff. Everyday is a brand new opportunity so let that bad day go and moving forward; Speak up, communicate, follow the procedures and policies, speak to management if required and it will get better. Best of luck!

Yeah WILQ I totally agree that was the best response. I was going through my head, wondering why I didn't say anything in that moment, but I was just in shock, since she came behind me and surprised me by screaming at me. It felt like being a kid again and an elder screaming at me when I wasn't expecting it. That is really the feeling I had.and that was on top of the feeling of humiliation that she thought I wasn't doing my part and made me look bad... By the time I was trying to clean. I was just trying to hold back my tears so didn't want to say anything. Then, I wanted to leave to calm down but I was concerned about ratios and leaving the other team members on their own. In the end they asked me to do some things in the kitchen but that's where the CM noticed me crying and when I tried to talk to her, I lost my breath completely. I shouldn't have tried to hold it in because I think that made it worse and I lost my breath because I was trying to hold in the crying. I was just so embarrassed around the other team members and also didn't want to concern the children who could also notice...

As an update I worked at another service for the second time the next day (different place). The pre-prep teacher expressed that she would tell the CM she wants me in more because she felt she could really trust me with the children because she really likes my approach (caring but tough, and I get involved with the children), mentioning that she can rely on me when she needs to do her programming and everything. Haha.. Talk about mixed messages...

Anyway, I had a shift at my base service today and my CM told me she heard about it. I was a bit disappointed because I expressed to the CM at the other service where I had the panic attack I don't want her to tell my CM when she suggested because I didn't have any problems at my base service and didn't want their opinions to be affected by it. I think the other CM was well-intentioned but I still didn't prefer it. I feel the CM didn't really see what happened and she wouldn't relay the story accurately, as she just saw the aftermath and different perspective from the co-workers involved. Anyway, my CM was not happy about it, mentioning that she's aware of some problems with the way staff treat each other at that service (she specifically mentioned the one who screamed at me). She kind of suggested I won't be going back there. I guess it may be best, and I have enough work right now anyway and get to work with lots of lovely teams and children.

Hi again Iris,

I’m glad to hear you had some better days. Don’t worry about your Centre manager finding out, I don’t know exactly how company set ups work as I have only worked for privately owned centres and now own my own centre which obviously is privately owned. But it could be part of their responsibility to inform other managers etc. I don’t know if you believe in things happening for a reason or not but maybe you going through that situation and having a panic attack will be the defining moment for changes to be take place and be implemented within your company to ensure that all staff are following correct practises and are respectful of each other.

every tricky situation we face in life provides us with an opportunity to learn from it. Now because you have experienced it you will know how to handle the situation and with Lorina’s Great advice to help you if you have a panic attack again. More importantly you will be able to have the understanding, compassion and knowledge to help if you see somebody else go through it too.

Take care and all the best